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Showing posts from August, 2021

The Principle of Non-Persuasive Argument

 Have you noticed what I've noticed? It's not really something new.  I started to notice way back in 2015-ish that protests seemed to be deliberately non-persuasive.  Note that this is well before Trump, possibly all the way back to the beginning of Obama's terms or farther.  And I'll admit that I've only noticed this as a left-wing phenomenon, possibly because I don't need to be persuaded of what my opinions already are.  (And right-wing arguments that I find stupid mostly elicit a rolling of my eyes.) I had a long conversation once with someone about the very poorly conceived practice of blocking freeways.  My argument was that anyone stuck on the freeway would be motivated negatively toward whatever the blockage was supposed to be about, and that furthermore, nothing about a freeway even began to indicate what cause the blockers were intending to highlight.  In fact, if I don't say here what the cause was, in future years no one will be able to figu...

Flatten the Curve

Remember this: When we began with Covid 19 we were generally told that the goal was to slow the spread, to "flatten the curve", in order to dribble out covid cases in bits and drabs to reduce the burden on hospitals and staff. Everyone was still going to eventually get it, just not all at once. Think about when that message shifted. Think about when the rhetoric changed to "defeat" or "end" Covid 19. No flu or covid virus, not one of them, that has made the jump from animals to humans has ever been defeated. Not a single one has truly come to an end. They mutate. They become less prevalent. They all still exist and are still passed between people. Flatten the Curve. That made sense. Let us take away all of your freedom, emotionally and psychologically abuse your children, disregard those with mental difficulty, isolate the elderly and let them die alone because, BECAUSE, if you allow these utterly HORRIFIC things... we can DEFEAT Covid 19. Utter, au...